Random thoughts while multitasking my way through life

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Every year Boo and I work on a craft for Thanksgiving. Sometimes the Thanksgiving theme is very strong like turkeys and pilgrims. Other times our project is just autumn inspired, like this year. We make one for us, and then a couple for family members.

After looking around online we came across some Autumn floral arrangements and liked those. After that we narrowed it down to door swags.

Today, we got our supplies out and this is our final product. We made each one a little different, although the flowers were the same in each arrangement. I bought flower bunches and then used wire cutters to separate the individual flower with the stem. I added real eucalyptus for color and texture, not to mention the fragrance.

I’ve written about the difficulty getting started, expectations, negative thoughts, being honest and making time for important stuff. I think the most important factor in achieving success is the support I am getting from the people around me.

I honestly feel blessed that I have such a good support system. Sully and Boo are behind me 100% in everything that I do but they’ve been extra awesome with my plan for the New Year. Boo has been an inspiration to me, she started exercising on her own at the beginning of November. She’s been playing Dance Central for Kinect and dances for an hour everyday. Between the dancing and giving up soft drinks, she has lost nearly ten pounds and she looks even more beautiful than before.

I’ve also have great support from my friends. Faith, of course, has been a source of support all year. Now she is a source of inspiration, she’s been on Weight Watchers and has lost nearly 40 pounds. What’s really amazing is that she had to have back surgery in June. From January to mid July, she lost weight just by eating a healthy diet. She was in so much pain before the surgery that walking, standing or sitting for any length of time was impossible. After the surgery she started walking as part of her rehabilitation and now she walks 3 to 4 miles everyday. I wish I had started walking with her (remotely, of course, since she’s in CA and I am in AZ), I’d love to be walking that far everyday. Now, Faith is only ten pounds away from her goal weight and being a life time WW member. I am so excited for her.

Another friend, Val has been working on her fitness and diet too. Val has started playing hockey again and every week I hear how much fun she’s had. Playing hockey burns calories like crazy all that skating around and Val is a fast skater. As hard as she’s been playing hockey she’s been working on the diet even more. Val been slowly moving the family to a gluten free diet mainly for her son’s health. She has also lowered her sodium intake after a high blood pressure scare at the end of the year. Val has already lost ten pounds just from lowering her sodium intake.

How can I not be inspired by them? Faith and I chat daily over Facebook, there’s occasional whining, always listening and a lot of cheering each other on. It really helps to have that daily conversation about how things are going. It makes everyday that I keep going an accomplishment, one more thing to cross off of the list. Val and I message over Facebook, bragging about our accomplishments or whining about our lack of motivation. It’s a great thing and I am so thankful.

I guess I should go take my walk so I can let Faith and Val know how far I walked today.

Phase 1: Day 5

It was a great walk. 12 minutes and 0.68 miles at my fastest pace yet. It’s not a long walk but I am still trying to get used to setting aside time for exercise. This is big.

My upper body workout really makes my shoulders sore. At least I am able to finish each set strong. Next phase, I will have to think about adding reps or sets.

Boo and I had a fantastic morning. We breezed through an early session of school. Boo cracked me up during her History lesson, she read the pages from her history text like a voice over from an American documentary. It was short school day and we were both ready to get out of there.

We had planned to run some errands so we both got changed to go out and then met back up in the Great room. Boo fed the cats while I fed the bunnies, then I let Foley in and got him crated. We headed out to the mall, Boo had gift cards to spend at Build a Bear and The Disney Store. She’d wanted to go for a couple of weeks but life has been a bit crazy and this was our day to go.

Build A Bear was quick and easy. Boo had a coupon for a free hat along with her gift card. She took advantage of the 2 for $15 sale on some pretty dresses, and got a third dress to finish off her gift card.

Our trip to the Disney Store was a little more involved, first of all it felt like there was a hundred people in there. Then we had to deal with the fact that everything had been moved around since the last time we were in the store. Luckily as we rambled around we ended up in the corner near the clearance shelves. Christmas decorations and accessories were all 50% off. I was surprised to see that their Christmas PJ’s were included in the clearance sale.

The original price was $34.50, so each set would only cost $17. I looked through the PJ’s left on the rack and was surprised to see Sully’s size. Honestly, I was so excited to see these in the store that I had to calm myself a bit to send a text to Sully. As other people started milling around the store and towards our corner. I pulled three sets of the men’s PJ’s off of the rack. Boo and I checked the sizes and we hung on to them while we waited for Sully’s text.

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While we were waiting I realized that they also had the women’s style. —>

I decided that the Henley type of shirt wouldn’t be so warm as the flannel. I talked to Boo about it and she didn’t want to change styles. I understood but I didn’t want to be the only one in a different style. It sounds silly but if Boo and I both were in the women’s style then it would be a natural separation. (Yes, this is how my brain works.) Since we had our sizes we moved out of the corner. We took about ten steps and then Boo declared that she had changed her mind, the button up flannel wasn’t going to work for her. So back to the corner to exchange the men’s pj’s for the women’s.

A few minutes later we got a thumbs up from Sully. Woohoo! Christmas pj’s all set and I’ve wanted these PJ’s since Boo was about four years old. I was a step away from doing a fist pump in the middle of the store. Instead Boo and I high fived each other on the way back to the car. Yes!

A few weeks ago we were watching a football game and the announcers mentioned that one of the players was questionable for the game due to ‘vertigo like symptoms’. I didn’t really say anything but I thought it was kind of odd. I’d never had vertigo but I didn’t think it was a serious enough condition to keep someone out of a game. I know that it can be a symptom related with head injuries and concussions so I let it go at that.

Until this morning, on a normal day I am a bit stumbly first thing in the morning. I will be the first person to tell you that I am not a morning person in any way, shape or form. This morning though I was grabbing on to the walls to walk Sully to the door. My head hurt and I had a lot of sinus pressure and took allergy medicine and some ibuprofen while Sully loaded his work stuff in his car. After he left I realized that the walls were listing to the left in a slow spin. I was pretty miserable at that point and it just got worse. I thought maybe resting in bed would help, not even close. I immediately got nauseous and then I got sick. Blah. Luckily that helped with the room spins although it took me a few hours to feel steady on my feet.

So, I apologize to every athlete that I have mentally questioned about vertigo symptoms because that was fairly miserable to deal with. Good news on the ankle front, it’s feeling pretty good. It doesn’t seem to be swelling anymore and I really feel like it is healing at this point. I still have to take it easy but I am relieved that it’s improving.

Later in the day I was able to get a few things done around the house. I got the bulk of the Halloween decorations packed up and put away in the garage. The kitchen table still has the linens and some of the kitchen stuff to deal with but I will take care of that tomorrow.

Today I am thankful that I am a stay at home mom. I can’t ever say how much I love the time that I spend with Boo. She was so sweet this morning when I didn’t feel well. I had a drink, she brought me a sandwich and worked the remote controls so I had something to watch.

I don’t know if I have mentioned my sprained ankle here or not, I know I’ve been whining about it enough. If I have I apologize for repeating myself but I am too lazy and/or in pain to look through my recent posts to see if I have.

So, anyway sprained ankle, it started over the summer with a pain across the top of my foot. I thought it was from bellydancing, which sounds sort of odd but not really when you think about how much you are standing with your knee bent and up on the ball of your foot.

If you aren’t used to standing in that position then you could see how it could cause some discomfort. During the same time I was having issues with the arch of both feet. Those issues fit the basic symptoms of plantar fasciitis, which is probably a combination of walking around without shoes and the bellydancing. I started wearing my shoes around the house and a very cheap fabric ankle brace while I slept. I did that for five days and the arch pain was gone, although the pain on the top of my foot still came and went.

About a month ago though, the pain started moving up toward my ankle and then one day I realized that it hurt when my ankle flexed and also when I stepped back or to the side. I kept thinking it felt like an ankle sprain but it was too high for an ankle sprain. After a couple of days of it hurting when I stepped wrong, I decided to look online and figured out that it’s a high ankle sprain. Makes sense, feels like an ankle sprain but too high, yeah, high ankle sprain.

I’ve been wearing a neoprene wrap ankle brace with two straps that wrap around the ankle. At night I’ve been wearing a simple ankle wrap that keeps me from moving around too much while I sleep and waking up in pain. It’s been helping and I’ve seen progress, now it only hurts if I step really wrong. I’ve been really careful to not make things worse.

Until this morning… our old nearly blind Labrador needed to go outside but kept missing the back door, you know, nearly blind and all. On our third time around I caught him by the collar to get him out the door. I don’t know if I startled him or if he was just being stubborn. Did I mention he was old? Either way he lunged away and I really tweaked my ankle. So much so that just sitting my ankle was aching enough for me to notice it. Time for RICE, (R) rest, (I) ice, (C) compression and (E) elevation.

Today, I am thankful for my sweet Boo who took awesome care of me while my ankle was hurting. She brought me an icepack and something to drink while I put my foot up. We both are thankful for Netflix because we watched some groovy shows while I rested.

Today, after we were done with school, Boo and I went shopping. I had some coupons that expire at the end of the month and decided since Sully was at work it would be a good idea for a fun afternoon.

We started at DSW. I was looking for shoes that would look good with jeans, cargo pants or dress pants. Not that I have any dress pants, mind you but I figured I should include them. I would have like to have found some slip on shoes, like a casual loafer. Several years ago I had a pair of shoes that laced up, they were brown leather-like material and kind of looked like a men’s shoe but they looked so cute with jeans. I wanted something like that. Of course, I found nothing like that. I found a lot of shoes with big heels, or big clunky slips ons with heels. Some were cute and I tried on a few of those but nothing really fit and some of them were so clunky that they just looked weird on my feet.

Boo had much better luck than I did and tried on a ton of shoes. Several of which I took pictures of so we could look for them online later. We didn’t buy anything in the store but I got some ideas so I could order online and use all of my coupons and codes. (More on this part later…)

After DSW we stopped at Joanns, we wandered a lot looking for various items on our list, most of which we couldn’t find. We did come across these nifty things to make headbands. You can choose any ribbon to put in the clips.

I have a headband similar to this one. That I got about twelve years ago at Target. It’s my favorite headband and I wear it at least once every week. I’ve been talking about making some other headbands like it since it’s so comfortable. I was excited to see that Simplicity had provided this option. The package contains two and we got a package with black bands and a package with silver grey bands. There might be other colors but this is what our Joanns had. We picked out ribbon but there were technical issues at the cutting counter with the electronic scanner things, so we left without the ribbon. I am pretty sure we will be at Joann’s again sometime soon.

After that we went to Build A Bear, I had a Stuff for Stuff certificate for $10 and then a Happy Birthday coupon for $5 off. Boo had wanted the Princess Merida outfit from ‘Brave’. This is the only pic I have right now. I will try to snag a pic of the bear dressed up.

We picked up lunch and went home to eat and watch reruns on TV. It was great having a day (or half a day) to do just fun stuff and enjoy being with Boo. She is super funny and we laughed a lot. It was a good day, indeed.

Later that night…

I went on to DSW’s website and ordered some shoes.

This is the Kelly & Katie Janell Wedge, I tried it on at DSW. They were comfortable and I think they will look good with jeans and my cargo pants.

I got free shipping if I spent a little more and found these cute shoes. I got them in black since I had already gotten the other shoes in brown.

Well, not always, but I do try really hard to be prepared, and I wasn’t even a Girl Scout.

Today, I am preparing lesson plans for this next homeschool year. I can’t believe that Boo is going to be in 5th grade. It seems like yesterday that we were singing the alphabet song and dancing around while we learned everything else.

Boo is a great student, she picks up things very quickly. She can read something, write it down and will be able to recall it later that week. I am like that, I remember in college being able to see my notes in my head. I could turn the pages (in my head) to find what I needed for a test or paper. It’s very helpful for spelling and grammar.

Most of what I am doing today is determining how the lessons will be set out over the school year. Our school year is 32 weeks long, split up into two, 16 week semesters, one before Christmas and one after. The sixteen week semesters are separated into two, 8 week sessions. I can further break down the sessions into 4 week blocks for some of the subjects.

Homeschooling can be a lot of work but I really love it. It gives me piece of mind that she is learning what is being taught. If we need to spend more time on something we just stop and go back until we are comfortable. Everyday isn’t perfect, we have good days and bad days. Most weeks start with moaning and groaning, and then Boo gets up and she’s all mopey. Some Mondays it can take us a good half hour or so for us to get into the groove. Beyond that though, it’s all good and I really enjoy our school time.